Pink Roses and Old Photos
by Gleek-Of-Nowhere
Summary: 12 years after the accident, Mark explains the beauty of who Lexie is and was to his 13 year old daughter Sofia. One-shot


**AN: I couldn't get this out of my mind so I decided to write it down. My emotions have been on overdrive since the finale so this is the result of it. Enjoy.**

* * *

"What's her name?" 13 year old Sofia asks as she stares down at a picture of a much younger version of herself being held by an unknown brunette. Next to her sits Mark with a somber expression. He tries hard to push away the tears that are forming with the never ending pain in his chest. He clears his throat, a distraction to keep his emotions in check.

"Alexandra Caroline Grey" he answers to his daughter. A ghost of a smile graces his face as he thinks about the one person who changed his world without even trying. "But no one ever called her _Alexandra_" Mark continues with light amusement, "she was always Lexie or Lex." He watches as Sofia traces the two faces in the picture with a smile on her face.

"She's so pretty…"

It barely registers in Sofia's head that she's whispered an innocent confession but she doesn't want to break this bubble that she's in with her own father. She doesn't know what it is _exactly_ but she feels it. She feels the intensity in the air. The way her dad is torn between looking at the picture in her hands and looking at her, causes something to click in her head.

"Do you still love her?" Sofia asks suddenly.

Mark's head snaps up from the photo to stare at his daughter. Blue eyes meet brown and he doesn't hesitate to answer, "Always have, always will munchkin."

The beaming smile that is now on his daughter's face eases his pain enough for him to smile back and pull her into a hug. It allows his voice to carry across the room with a reassuring force as he adds as an afterthought, "She was the best thing to happen to me aside from you." As the words ring out to the empty living room in Mark's apartment, a silence falls over the pair. Mark plays with the pin straight hair on his daughter's head, his mind racing back to a time where he and Lexie were together. He's brought out of his thoughts when Sofia jumps up from the couch, holding her hand out to her father.

"Can I use your phone?"she asks with a smile on her face.

Mark looks on with knitted eyebrows, the confusion written all over his face as he fishes for his cell phone in his jacket pocket. Once it's in Sofia's possession, she scrolls through the names in her father's phonebook looking for the one she knows will be there. Small fingers glide across the screen, searching through the A's and then through the L's. Sofia frowns as she stares at the non-existing space between the names Larry and Little Grey, where Lexie's number should have been.

"Dad" she complains "why don't you have her number?" Without waiting for an answer, she heads to the door. She begins to put on her shoes and jacket, but stops momentarily when she notices she's the only one getting ready.

"Dad, come on. Let's go."

Mark is still shifting through his emotions when his daughter calls him over to the door. It only hits him now that Sofia doesn't really know what happened in that plane crash 12 years ago. She doesn't know that Lexie is _gone_. She doesn't know that her old number _is_ in his phone even though it was disconnected long ago. She just doesn't _know_. And now anger is added to the list of emotions flowing through him. He's mad at himself for never telling Sofia what actually happened. He's mad at Callie and Arizona for being so kind to him, never pushing him to tell Sofia about losing the love of his life. He's mad at everyone and he's mad at Lexie, except not really. It's more of a want. He _wants_ to be mad at Lexie for leaving him 12 years ago even though she really had no choice.

"Sof…" he quietly begs his daughter. But Sofia misses the look of pain written on Marks face. Her only thought is to go to the woman who her father is so in love with and beg for her to take him back. To take them both back. Because for some unknown reason, Sofia feels a strong connection to the woman in the photo. So when Mark calls out to her again, she shakes her head and tosses the car keys to him.

"Dad come on, she's still here in Seattle right? Let's go get her back." Sofia opens the front door of the apartment and steps out into the hallway before turning back around. She watches Mark hang up his car keys and grab his wallet from the table by the door.

"Let's walk" he offers to the hopeful girl in front of him. "She's only a few blocks away."

* * *

Mark pulls out his wallet and pays the man at the stand as Sofia delicately grabs the pink rose from his hands. She smiles up at Mark and hands him the rose and he can't help but return the smile. They're just around the corner from the cemetery and he knows now is the time. They begin walking once again and his heart breaks just a little bit more when he hears his daughter say something along the lines of, "Dad you gotta get her back and when you do, tell her to live with you. Cause living by the cemetery is kinda creepy."

He sighs and brings his hand to his neck, rubbing it nervously as they continue their walk down the street.

"Sof… there's something I have to tell you."

But the words never register in Sofia's head. There's only silence and Mark suddenly thinks it'll be too hard and that this was a very bad idea. When his eyes meet his daughter's face, he realizes she's looking past the tall metal fence and onto a gravestone just a few feet away. The face engraved on the stone is undeniably familiar and he can almost _see_ the gears shifting in Sofia's head. She looks down at the photo in her right hand and back to the gravestone, repeating the action several times. She turns to Mark and looks at the pink rose in his hand then back to the one lying just above the name, _Alexandra Caroline Grey_. He tries to stop the tears from coming; he wants to be strong in front of his daughter. Mark feels the cold hand of grief fight its way into his chest, wrapping its lifeless fingers around his heart, and squeezing the fight out of him. So the second he sees Sofia's red eyes and the tears on her cheeks, he loses all willpower. Big arms wrap around thin shoulders as smaller arms wrap around a strong waist.

"Dad…" Sofia manages to sob out. No other words are able to form on his daughter's lips as sobs rack her body. One hand comes up to cover her mouth hoping to quiet her cries. Mark tries to be the strong one of the two and he drops down to his knees to be eye level with his daughter. When he looks at his daughter, the pain in her eyes is unbearable. He doesn't know that Sofia is thinking the exact same thing when she stares into his kind blue eyes.

"I'm so sorry Dad. I am _so_ sorry. I didn't know" she cries out. That's when Mark realizes that she's crying because she sees the pain. The pain he had buried for 12 years. He wants to scold himself for allowing a 13 year old, _his_ 13 year old, to feel pain that should only be felt by himself. It makes him want to run away, to put as much distance between himself and that haunting gravestone that shouldn't even be there. But small hands find their way into bigger hands, and he feels Sofia pull him up to stand on his feet. They enter the cemetery and make their way through rows of gravestones, only stopping when they reach Lexie's. Simultaneously they let out chocked up sobs as they both try to fight back the tears. Mark places the pink rose on top of the gravestone right next to the one he placed just a week before. He steps away and watches Sofia turn over the picture in her hands, reading the doctors writing over and over again.

_Little Grey and Sofia_

A new set of tears washes over her body as she realizes her number _was_ still in her father's phone. She turns the picture back around and stares at it once more before shifting her gaze back to her father. Teary eyes meet, and she asks him if they have another copy of this photo. Mark simply nods his head and assures her they have 3 different copies of that picture, 2 belonging to him and 1 belonging to Callie and Arizona. Satisfied with his answer, Sofia faces the gravestone once more and places the picture underneath the roses. She takes a step back and grabs on to her father's hand seeking the comfort only he can give.

"I love you" they both confess into the air, hoping somehow Lexie is still listening.


End file.
